The Descent
by Lennelle
Summary: The thing no one knows, will ever know, is that the fall doesn't kill Sam.


Written for ohsam's Triple Play 2016 on Livejournal. The prompt was:

1) the cage 2) Lucifer and Michael 3) Withdrawal from demon blood.

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The thing no one knows, will ever know, is that the fall doesn't kill Sam.

And falling... it never seems to stop. Just black empty. A point of light above, slowly fading. He is being swallowed down Hell's gullet. Straight to the centre of the earth.

When Sam reaches the bottom, Lucifer catches him and lays him down gently on the cage floor. The bullets in Sam's chest from Bobby's gun don't bleed, the metal ridged between his ribs and make themselves at home. But he isn't dead. The devil is still in him.

The cage is locked. No way out. The angels are scared. They shriek, burned bright. Their voices and the sight of them crack Sam's eardrums, blind him.

When Lucifer tears himself from Sam's flesh, it is agony. It is ripping your own bones out of its meat. It is turning yourself inside out. And Sam sees the devil's true face. Pure light. Corrupted. It scorches his eyes from his sockets.

The cage is held at the centre of an eternity. There is nothing. Only the cage. Any screams is held within its confines. And, god, did Sam scream.

Sam can just about hear. Lucifer is shouting at him, spitting at him in Enochian.

I saved the world, Sam reminds himself. I will suffer if it means no one else has to.

He prepares for pain.

And receives nothing.

There's warmth and the bullets in his chest are gone, the wounds are healed.

Dirty, filthy, Lucifer spits. Poison twisting around inside of you. I will watch you purge it from your veins for the rest of my existence. You are nothing, Sam Winchester. You are nothing but mud-crawling vermin.

So begins his eternal life.

He's left alone in the beginning, mostly. He can sense Satan close by, can feel his grace brush his skin, can feel a thousand eyes trained on his back.

You'll sit there until he dies? that's Adam's voice. But not Adam's voice. And then what?

I make him pay, answers Lucifer.

Sam curls in on himself a little. The presence of the two creatures makes him feel like an ant under a lion's foot. He brings his hand up to his face. The skin around his eye sockets is scabbed and hard, his cheeks are bubbled and raw. He can't see anything.

It begins like it did last time, only worse. Sam had forgotten about the blood, he'd been a little distracted with his entry to an eternity in Hell. But he almost cries once the shakes start. But, of course, he has no tears to shed.

He's hungry, thirsty, tired. He needs to piss. He suspects the deepest pit of hell doesn't have a toilet. He throws up all over himself and Lucifer laughs. Micheal is quiet, uninterested.

The need creeps up on him, grabs him by his core and refuses to let go. He hates himself, but he begins to think only of the blood, thoughts of his brother or the world he left behind are put to the side. Sometimes, he catches himself, begins to whisper names to himself. Names of people he left behind, people who get to keep on living. Dean, Sarah Blake, Becky Rosen, Chuck...

It doesn't take long for him to run out of living people to remember. He begins list the people who didn't make it:

Mom (burned alive), Dad (dragged to Hell), Jess (burned alive), Bobby (neck snapped), Cas (split into a million pieces), Jo (Hellhound), Ellen (bomb), Ash (demons), Henrickson (skinned alive)...

The list goes on until Sam can see again.

His mother is there. She's sitting there in her nightgown. A woman in white. A bloody mess. She's beautiful.

You did amazing, baby, she says. You did it. I'm so proud of you.

Her smile is the only warm, safe thing for an eternity. A lighthouse on the shore. He reaches out for her, feels nothing. He feels his face, finds his eyes still missing. Then, she's gone.

They keep coming after that. Dean. Dad. Bobby. Cas. Jess. You were never my brother, Sam. I should have killed you when I had the chance, Sam. You disgust me, Sam. You are an abomination, Sam. You killed me, Sam.

He forgets where he is. Forgets it's not real. He's trapped in his head, trapped in this cage. He vomits and sweats and shakes. He blacks out and returns with aching joints and locked muscles and a chunk out of his tongue.

Through it all he hears Lucifer's laughter.

He's a mess. Lying in his own bodily fluids, sticky and frozen. He can smell himself, he can hear the rasping in his lungs. As agonising as it was in Bobby's panic room, it's so much worse now.

I think he's near the end of his rope, brother, says Michael.

I can hear his body giving out, Lucifer says, amused. His soul is clanging around in there, waiting for a reaper.

No one's coming, Michael says, hopeless. He's not talking about Sam.

I think it's happening, says the devil.

Sam can feel it. He felt it in Cold Oak. He felt it in that abandoned house in 1978. That slow crawl up his body, the slow switch-off from his toes to his head. His breaths are sickly and grating. His heart is stuttering against his rib cage, desperate for escape.

It's coming. It's here for him. Death.

The pain stops in his body. Sam is without the confines of himself. He drifts. He aims upwards. He meets the cage ceiling. He feels Lucifer curl around him. The sun blocking out a dying star. Sam flickers. He's pulled back down.

It begins again.

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I've filled four prompts on ohsam so far today so there'll be some more headed your way! Head over to ohsam on livejournal to see all the awesome prompt fills and join in the fun!


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